Front seal on a 2004 differential is leaking. | Ford Explorer Forums

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Front seal on a 2004 differential is leaking.

dbfjik

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Joined
December 16, 2008
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City, State
new york
Year, Model & Trim Level
2004 explorer
Hi all ,
I am new here an looking for some help,

I have a ford explorer 2004 and have a leak from the front diffrential seal, any info on the remove and replace procedure much appreciated.
 



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Welcome to this forum! You have to remove the driveshaft, and the part with the large nut which holds the U joint, then you could pry out the seal with a special hook tool. The new one gets tapped into place with a seal driver.
 






Looking for more info on this proceedure too

I've got the same problem with my '05 XLT. Not much luck on finding step by step how-to on this in this forum. I did see something about marking the bolt with a punch before removing it so that when you retighten it, using an air tool for accuracy, you can go just barely past the origional position to preload it. Whatever that means?? Apparently that's where the screw up can happen for the do-it-yourself mechanic. I'm going to shop for a manual that covers this and try to do it over the holidays. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone who knows will fill in more of the details for us.
 






I just did this on my '05. It was easier than I thought it was going to be from what I've read about preload and such. I marked the bolt position and took a torque reading of the bearing drag just in case. The bolt was very tight and took a 2' 1/2" drive breaker bar with an 1" 1/8" socket to remove. Then I used a multi-position pulling tool to get the flange assembly off. I didn't have the seal removal tools so I carefully used a chisel to get under the lip and worked the seal out. I sucked what oil I could out of the fill hole using a hose and empty gear oil container. Then after cleaning the seal seat and putting white lithium on the seal, I used a 2" 3/4" socket and a heavy hammer to tap(an understatement) the new seal back into place. After I put a little threadlock on the nut and shaft threads, I made sure to put the assembly back in the same position, then tightened the nut down. It was as much a bear to get it back to the origional position as it was to loosen, and I tried to put just a touch more on it, but that was all she wanted to go and I didn't want to push it. Reassembled the driveshaft back in its origional position using thread lock on the bolts and torqueing them down. So far so good.
 






Anyone have pics of this leak?
 






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